


My, My; Hey, Hey

by gritsinmisery



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Established Relationship, M/M, Serial: s129 The Five Doctors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 18:22:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8500321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gritsinmisery/pseuds/gritsinmisery
Summary: Why the Master wouldn't regenerate when shot





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Game Ends](https://archiveofourown.org/works/165723) by [gritsinmisery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gritsinmisery/pseuds/gritsinmisery). 
  * Inspired by [Unknown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/165733) by [gritsinmisery](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gritsinmisery/pseuds/gritsinmisery). 



> AKA "The Game Ends" extended version.
> 
> Title and quoted lyric from Neil Young's song of the same title.

They’re manufactured, not something organic, but there they stand in orderly rows rising from the earth, his very own crop. Millions of hectares of gleaming rockets, “grown” and tended by enslaved field hands, each ready to carry its own seed of destruction to a distant star system, so that he and his children might start the cycle anew. What a glorious harvest!

There’re only two of them now, he and the Doctor. The Master has tried, with all in his power, to start up a new Time Lord empire. This one will be the way things should have been before: their race ruling the galaxy, not just sitting back and letting things happen. Davros would never have created his abominable children; the Time War would never have been fought and lost; the two of them would not be continuing their centuries-long battle on a black-and-white rocky hilltop so very far from their bright orange home.

But now the Doctor has tricked him, stopped his plans once again, and they stand together overlooking one of his fields. Even if the Master only gets this first crop, he’ll still see to it that the Doctor joins him in the reaping. He still has the trigger for the rockets’ black hole converters in his hand.

What was it the old, whiny singer from this planet wrote? _It’s better to burn out than to fade away._ Well, that particular ape got something right. Surely the Doctor can see this; see that the last two members of the greatest species in the universe should not just wander off into the dark, but go out in a blaze of glory, with a planet, a sun, a whole solar system as their funeral pyre. “Now it ends, Doctor… We shall stand upon this earth together as it burns.” The universe considers their race old and stodgy; let’s see what they think of this.

But his enemy, his opposite, his one-time friend and lover, the only other surviving member of his race, is having none of it. “I’ve always had the greatest secret of all. I know you. Explode those ships: you kill yourself. That’s the one thing you could never do.”

True… Rassilon knows he’s fought like none other to keep going. When they hauled him out of the Matrix for the Time War, it was like the Universe itself was justifying that fight. He’s only one regeneration into a new life-cycle; it seems like a waste to give up another long life now, even for such a glorious end. Living to fight another day has always been his modus operandi, so he hands over the converter trigger, but doesn’t manage to jump away before the Doctor grabs him and is dragged along.

But he's left the Paradox Machine alone just long enough for them to destroy it.

It's too much. All his plans thwarted, the work of the last year reversed, and the threat of eons spent traveling with -- what was that horrendous television marionette from the last Earth-century? Oh yes, _Howdy Doody_  -- as jailer. He'd spend all of their time together trying to either kill the Doctor or free himself, and all to the beat of those unceasing drums in his head. Which, once he was free of the Doctor, would be the only thing he'd hear...

So when dear broken Lucy fired the gun, he made the decision the Doctor told him he never would. “Dying in your arms. Happy now?”

“It’s only a bullet. Regenerate.”

 _Doctor, don’t you think I want to? When they revived me for the Time War, they gave me twelve more regenerations. No more stealing bodies because I couldn’t regenerate; no more oozing about as puddles of slime, or worse. Now I can’t. You’ve doomed us both. Always running off at the mouth, you are. You ass! I. Will. Not. Be. Known. Especially by you. And I won't be caged, either. You've been trying to do that for centuries._  “I guess you don’t know me so well… I refuse.”

“You an’ me – all the things we’ve done? …We’re the only two left. Regenerate!”

 _“He knew very well that immortality was a curse, not a blessing.”_ He can hear the Doctor's former self pronouncing what was perhaps the greatest truth about their race, a truth especially applicable when it came down to the two of them.  _“This is the game of Rassilon: To lose is to win, and he who wins shall lose.”_ What could be worse than being the last two standing?

Being the last one.

“How about that? I win.”


End file.
